Most fires in this kind of battery start while it is on charge. Use the charger supplied with that bike, or a charger the manufacturer specifies for that pack. A charger from a different model can overload the battery.

Charge time, voltage and how full to leave the pack are on that bike’s page and in its manual. Do not copy the numbers from one model onto another.

• Charge on a hard, flat surface, where heat can get away. Not on a bed, a sofa or a carpet.
• Keep the bike and the charger off the way out of the room. Do not block an exit.
• Have a smoke alarm in the room where you charge.
• Let the pack cool after a ride before you plug it in.
• Do not leave it charging while you are asleep, or while nobody is in the building.
• Unplug the charger when it has finished.
• Buy a replacement charger from a seller you can trace. An unmarked charger is not a spare.

This follows London Fire Brigade guidance on charging. The same rules apply to a dirt bike pack as to an e-bike pack.

Stop using it if the pack is extremely hot, swollen, leaking, cracked, hissing, cracking, or giving off a strong chemical smell. A little warmth in use or on charge is normal. A pack you cannot touch, or a case that has changed shape, is not.

Switch it off. Unplug it if you can do that without staying next to it. Do not put it back on the bike, and do not charge it. Message sales@directmx.shop or WhatsApp 07427 965 293 (text only), and report a faulty battery to your local Trading Standards office.

If it is smoking or on fire, get everyone out, raise the alarm, and call 999 from outside. Do not try to put it out. The smoke is toxic and the fire can spread quickly. That is the Fire Brigade instruction, not a shop preference.

Keep the pack cool and dry, off the escape route, out of a hot van and out of direct sun. Do not charge a pack that is frozen or that has been sitting in extreme heat. The manual for that bike says what state of charge to leave it in if the bike is stored.

The battery that drives one of these bikes is an industrial battery under the Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009. Environment Agency guidance classes a battery used to propel an electric vehicle, including an electric bicycle, as industrial. A battery over 4 kg is industrial as well. These packs are not portable household batteries, and they are not car starter batteries.

The in-shop take-back rule for retailers is different. It applies to a distributor of portable batteries who supplies 32 kg or more of those batteries to end users in a year. It does not apply to these traction packs. A supermarket battery tub is for portable batteries. Do not put a bike pack in one, and do not put it in household waste.

If a business only sells equipment that already contains a battery, and does not also sell batteries on their own, Environment Agency guidance says that business is not a battery distributor. A complete motorcycle is equipment with a battery in it.

The duty to take a waste industrial battery back, free of charge, sits with the producer: the business that first placed that battery on the UK market. That is often the UK importer. It is not automatically every shop that later sells the bike. The producer must take it back when they supplied that end user with a new industrial battery in the same year, and in the further cases set out in regulation 35.

Direct MX buys from authorised dealers, resellers and importers. Where a UK supplier has already placed the bike on the UK market, the producer duty sits with that supplier. Where Direct MX is the importer and is first to place that pack on the UK market, the producer duty can sit with Direct MX for that pack. If the bike we are offering you is a parallel import, we tell you before you buy.

Message us before you bring a pack to the shop. We will tell you who has to take that pack back, and whether it should come to Unit 14, Emley Business Park, Leys Lane, Huddersfield, HD8 9RG. Do not arrive with a hot, swollen or damaged pack without speaking to us first. Weekdays are 10am to 4pm. Weekends are by appointment only.

The official accounts are on GOV.UK and in the Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009.